Who ivented the camera,and when? What did the first camera look like (send pictures) how long did it take to develop a picture with the first camera? please send a timeline of cameras? When was the flash invented? And who are some famouse photographers?

-- Isabell Donaire (VV1010@aol.com), February 04, 2000

Answers

Sounds like a trip to your local library is in order.

-- Ron Shaw (shaw9@llnl.gov), February 04, 2000.

I agree with the suggestion of going to the library. Even if one of us had all the answers to all those general questions, it would take a week to answer them all. Sounds like you need to do some research and read some books!

-- Bill Riemenschneider (willir@hotmail.com), February 04, 2000.

I think Al Gore invented photography...Personal computers weren't around at that time, so he wasn't busy figuring out how to invent the internet yet!

-- Dave Richhart (pritprat@erinet.com), February 04, 2000.

Yes Al Gore invented it, while George W. was still figuring out how to a.) dodge goinng to Vinam and B.) snort coke. Political humor aside, the modern camera is an evolution of a renaissance invention the camera obscura. Contact Roy Flukinger at the University of Texas in Austin. He has in the collection thew first photograph (actually a Daguerrotype) of a living person. The iage was recorded in Paris, FR about 1835/1836.

-- Ellis Vener (evphoto@insync.net), February 04, 2000.

The Eastman Museum at the Kodak web site -- www.kodak.com -- has just what you are looking for. Plan to spend the evening at the screen. Have plenty of paper in the printer.

-- Tony Brent (ajbrent@mich.com), February 04, 2000.

The hard part of inventing photograph was not the camera but the light sensitive medium. A kind of camera existed before photography, the camera obsura. Artists used it to trace out the perspective of scences.

Louis Daguerre is credited with the invention of photography for his announcement of the daguerreotype process in January 1839. The French government paid for the process to be publically described later that year. William Henry Fox Talbot invented a different process, but announced after Daguerre.

The standard book is probably "The History of Photography" by Beaumont Newhall. You can read about daguerreotypes on the web at the site of the Daguerrian Society, http://www.daguerre.org Daguerrotypes are unlike any modern process and cannot be fully appreciated until you view a real one rather than a reproduction in a book.

-- Michael Briggs (MichaelBriggs@earthlink.net), February 06, 2000.

Leonardo da Vinci 1515 camera obscura. William Henry Fox Talbot pioneered negative process (I think) circa mid to late 1800s.

Hope this points you in right direction.

David Kirk

-- David Kirk (David_J_Kirk@hotmail.com), February 06, 2000.

The camera existed in one form or another, probably even before Leonardo da Vinci (apparently Aristotle and Euclid make reference to a type of Camera Obscura)- pinhole cameras, Camera obscura's etc. It wasn't until Fox Talbot et al that a way was found to fix the image.

For an interesting new take on some of this, pick up the latest New Yorker and see the article about David Hockney and his ideas about the substantial use of such optical devices by painters throughout the centuries, and then it's decline when the film camera arrived, which, he believes, led to the radical changes in art since then.

Tim A

-- Tim Atherton (tim@KairosPhoto.com), February 06, 2000.

Didn't Nicephore Niepce get an image before either Daguerre or Fox Talbot?

-- Pete Andrews (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.uk), February 07, 2000.

Bing,bing,bing,bing,bing. The prize goes to Pete Andrews. Congratulations Pete. We're not sure what you've won, but you do have the correct answer.

-- steve (s.swinehart@worldnet.att.net), February 08, 2000.

There is a nice photo timeline at

http://webby.cc.denison.edu:90/art/photo/time-line2.html.

It credits the first reference to the Camera Obscura to 500 BC China.

-- Tom DiCorcia (dicorciat@asme.org), February 14, 2000.

i think that this web site should have the answer to my question

-- bauman,natalie (fellezzabellezza@aol.com), April 11, 2002.

i also think whomever posted this very lobng, and very general question should go to the library...i came to this website looking for my camera question to be answered, but with no luck. So you can only guess where i'm goin to next...thats right~the library (for those of you who don't know what that is..it's a big place with lots,and lots of books..) good luck to your searches...

-- Chris Smith (Cherrypi9@Hotmail.com), April 14, 2002.

Same here, Chris.

Kirstin

-- Kirstin M. (lykiki@hotmail.com), April 18, 2002.